Lenten Reflection 2

Text: John 4:5-42 Sermon Preached: March 24, 2011

In our text today we witness the living water gushing forth to erode the walls that divide and exclude. We hear this word well aware of what water can do. In the last few weeks the world has watched in horror as water that was stirred to life by the quaking ground has claimed the lives of thousands of our brothers and sisters, especially in Japan. We mourn the movement of this water. Here in Minnesota, where the snow just does not seem to stop, people are bracing themselves for the water that threatens to burst the barriers that we’ve set up to protect ourselves and our possessions. We are very aware of what water can do.

In fact, many of us have probably witnessed the destructive capabilities of water first hand. I personally had the distinct privilege to be in central Iowa during the great flood of 2008. Our home that had never flooded before fell victim to the living water that summer. This water broke through every barrier. It crumbled boxes, weakened walls, and threw open doors. Everything that kept our belongings protected and in their proper places was eroded so that our stuff was scattered about the basement. Living water flows into unexpected places with the force to tear down barriers.

Whether we have experienced something like this first hand or have watched what has happened on the news, we are all aware of what living water can do when it moves into our lives.

The water that Jesus offers in our text today also crumbles and erodes barriers. The living water from Jesus erodes the barriers that divide us from God and one another. Only, when these walls are eroded it is not cause for mourning but celebration. For, with these walls destroyed, there is nothing to stop us from loving God and one another.

The world of the woman at the well is full of walls. Her walls have been constructed for her, to keep her in her proper place. The narrator knows this. While this woman is not mentioned by name, the narrator takes care to tell us again and again that she is a Samaritan and a woman. Both her ethnic identity and her womanhood should keep Jesus the Jewish rabbi safely on his side of the wall.

The woman herself is also keenly aware of her identity. Jesus asks her for a drink, and she responds suspiciously, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She knows her history; that her people have been victimized and colonized five times over the last 700 years, with Rome as the sixth colonizer. She knows that they have thus intermarried with their colonizers and that though they worship Yahweh her people and Jesus’ people have some central theological differences concerning the Law and where to worship. The woman at the well knows that these ethnic and religious differences should keep Jesus and her safely on opposite sides of the wall.

Perhaps she thinks it odd when Jesus brings up her marital history, that like her people who have been colonized 5 going onto 6 times, she has been given in marriage five times to five different people and is now with her sixth. She is a woman who has experienced tragic loss and great need. Her victimization and the victimization of her people should keep Jesus safely on the other side of the wall.

With this in mind, she initiates a deeply theological conversation with Jesus about the very wall that divides her from him. “Where should we worship?” She gets to the heart of their religious differences. Her identity brings with it walls of gender, nationality, ethnicity, and religion that should keep Jesus, the Jewish man, in his proper place, safely on his side of the wall.

When the disciples return, having found food for their teacher, they are astonished to find Jesus speaking with a woman. Can’t Jesus see the wall there? What sort of rabbi is this? I think the disciples are particularly concerned with her gender because the narrator had a hunch that future generations would have the same concern. What with all the non-biblical speculation about her…let’s call it sin to put it gently. See, even faithful preachers and interpreters see the wall there and can’t help but define her by it, making it as tall as possible by adding lacking morals to her identity. In any case, her gender identity should exclude her. Jesus should definitely stay safely on his side of the wall.

These walls should ultimately define her and keep her in her proper place. They should keep Jesus away. But here is the astonishing thing…Jesus does not finally let the walls define or exclude her. Jesus defines her specifically as one who is included. One who is welcomed, and beloved. One who is worth his time and his gift of living water, one who can provide for him and witness to him. He meets her on her side of the wall to give her the water that will crumble the walls.

The water that crumbles her wall starts with an encounter. Jesus meets her in the heat of the day as one in need. He does not let the walls keep him from her, but comes to her…in her land, at her well; to encounter the fullness of her humanity. He does not ask her to change her religion or national identity, or even to leave the man she is with. No! He simply reveals himself to her and shows that he knows her. He knows her truly and deeply, even in her most closely held hurt. When he reveals that he knows her she starts to see who he really is…he’s the one her people have been waiting for, the Messiah, I AM. He knows her so that she can know him.

Jesus crosses the walls that divide to enter deeply into relationship with this woman. In this she is given the living water that will never run out. This relationship is the water that sustains. So, when she leaves she doesn’t take her water jar with her. She leaves it because she doesn’t need it. The water has been poured into her. This water gushes forth crumbling all the walls that exclude her from relationship with Jesus and his disciples. She starts to see, like Jesus does, that the walls are crumbling and breaking down. She is still a woman, still a Samaritan, still one who has known tragedy, but these are no longer reasons for walls of exclusion as they are not her ultimate definition. She begins to see that she is defined by the relationship that Jesus has started with her.

With the walls crashing down around her she rushes home to bring her neighbors so that their walls might come crashing down, so they can see and can start to figure out with her what it means to see the world in this way and what it means to be in relationship with this odd and wondrous man. As the living water that Jesus gives starts to break down their walls that divide and exclude them from God and one another; when they encounter him for themselves, they can say, “Truly this is the Savior of the world.”

Jesus tells his disciples in today’s text that he has come to finish the work of the Father, on the cross he declares that it is finished; he offers the Samaritan woman the ever-quenching living water and on the cross it flows from his side, destroying all walls dividing God’s beloved humanity.

Our own world is full of walls. Literal walls divide entire nations. We exclude and are excluded by walls that our society builds around gender, socio-economic status, race, religion, and sexual orientation. These are only a few of the definitions that have walls built around them in our world. Our churches even erect or support walls to try to exclude the other from God and from us. It’s safer this way, we think to ourselves. Many friends have shared stories with me about walls erected to keep us from being who we are called to be in relationship with Christ. Whether we have been thought to be too young to be called or whether people have denied the validity of our call because of our gender, or you can add in your own experience. We have run headfirst into these walls.

Unfortunately for these barriers, Christ still encounters us with this gift of living water. Christ meets us in the ordinariness of our everyday lives, at our own wells where we are just gathering water for the day. He meets us in the everyday stuff of life, in bread and wine, in words, in the other who indelibly touches us across walls that should divide. In this coming to know Christ, in these ordinary encounters, we are given the living water.

Can you hear the walls start to crumble? Can you feel the living water spray through the cracks of our walls of exclusion and division? Can you see the rubble fly in different directions as the water finally breaks through? This living water gushes forth into the fullness of our world, crumbing the walls that divide us from God and our neighbors. Because Jesus has encountered us in our land, has met us and continues to meet us where we are, we are free to be united with God and one another…we are free to live in a world without walls.

Lenten Reflection 1

On the first Sunday of this reflective 40 day journey that we call lent, we ran into Jesus in what might seem like a rather surprising place. This place is one with which we human creatures are quite familiar. It is a place of chaos and danger, of anxiety and hunger, of distrust and temptation. We begin this Lenten journey by meeting Jesus in the wilderness.

The wilderness brings to mind a number of biblical images. The patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis spend some time there, some figuratively, some literally. Elijah fled for his life and asked to die in the wilderness. And, of course, the people Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years, a really long time to be there.

For some of us, the wilderness brings to mind our own life experiences. The death of a loved one, the loss of a job, even the call to serve God in any number of capacities, and you can name your own wilderness experience, these leave us wandering, famished, exhausted. And Jesus meets us here.

Now, I do not come from a very outdoorsy family. When we went “camping” every summer it was either to my grandparents’ condo on lake Okoboji or at a resort style Bible camp complete with air conditioning. So, I did not get to really start to understand wilderness in the literal sense until college when I spent four months in Tanzania, mostly deep in the bush amongst Maasai tribes.

My first worship experience in Tanzania was toward the end of an especially dry dry season. Service on the dusty open plain in this small Masaai village was interrupted a number of times by debris blown into our windowless worship space, dust in our eyes, and small wind whipped dust cyclones that would tear through in front of the altar. Here was chaos and some level of uncertainty in the wilderness, but it was also here in our wilderness community that we heard the word and received the Lord’s Supper. To my surprise, Jesus was in this wilderness!

“Great,” we might say to ourselves, “Jesus showed up in this dry and desolate place, he must be here to scoop us up and take us out of here or at least turn this wilderness into a bright sunny beach. After all, we just learned in Jesus’ baptism that occurs immediately before this in Matthew that Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of God is certainly powerful enough to get us out of here.” But, to our surprise, we encounter Jesus, this Son of God in the wilderness as one with us. We encounter Jesus as one who is feeling the weight of the wilderness himself, as one who is hungry, tempted, and yet faithful. Suddenly, we are forced to reconsider what Jesus’ being the Son of God must mean. Maybe it means more than supernatural ability and kingly power. Maybe being the Son of God means trusting faithfully in God’s promises, especially in the wilderness.

In our text today, Jesus shows us what being the Son of God looks like, as He allows only God to define that relational identity. The season of Lent that we have recently entered is a time to reflect on that very identity and it is a reminder to us Christians that who we are is intimately intertwined with who Christ is. In short, because of who Christ is, we are who we are.

As we reach our text in Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus, God has just recently broken the news: “This is my Son,” God tells the world. Rather than throwing a parade or making up for twenty-some missed birthday parties, God’s Spirit brings Jesus TO BE tested in the wilderness. This is a time for Jesus to live into his newly revealed identity. Now, hungry from 40 days of fasting, the tester shows up and the exam begins.

“If you are the Son of God…” the devil immediately tells Jesus what the subject of the test will be. The subject is Jesus’ sonship. The temptations that the devil puts before Jesus are concerned with who Jesus is in relation to God. The devil, after all, has an idea about what should make someone God’s Son. This idea is what we might call common knowledge. The Son of God, common knowledge tells us, deserves and gets satisfaction, power, and authority. This Son of God should be glorious like a well-fed earthly king. The devil’s idea is that the Son of God has the power to fulfill his own immediate needs and that the Son of God has spiritual authority and autonomy and that the Son of God is entitled to imperial rule. Sounds right…doesn’t it?

These tests are temptations to live like common knowledge would tell us a Son of God should live. They are temptations of self-satisfaction, distrust, and the status-quo type power of empire and earthly rulers. Ultimately, all of these are temptations to be Son of God in a way that is defined by someone other than God. These are temptations to be someone other than who Jesus is, temptations not to live into his identity.

The amazing thing is that Jesus does not let the devil have the final word on the matter of who he is! God has the final word! Three times Jesus is tested and three times Jesus responds with God’s word. Trust in God’s provision, God’s faithfulness, and God’s way characterize Jesus as the Son of God and silence the voice that speaks against this identity.

Now, here is the beautiful thing, because of who Christ is in relation to God, we are freed to ever more fully be who we are…the Children of God! We are free, by virtue of Christ’s living into his identity as Son of God to live into our own identity as Children of God. What we hear in Matthew’s gospel is not that we can overcome temptation if we just try, but that out identity is finally not defined by the devil, that is, by the powers of selfishness, distrust, the might of the status quo, or anything we might worship other than God. No! As Children of God we are finally defined by God. God has the final word and says to all of us, “You are my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Because of who Christ is we are who we are. In the wilderness of this life and especially now in the wilderness of lent, we are freed to live more fully into this identity, to be who we are.

In this particular season, most of us in this room are in the risky and chaotic wilderness of waiting for internship placement. Others here today are in the wilderness of dealing with ornery students who are in the wilderness of waiting. Meeting Jesus in the wilderness at this particular time in this season comes pretty naturally, because, well, we are already there in this dry and desolate place of uncertainty and anxiety. This is our condition and Jesus meets us here.

In his commentary on the first temptation Jesus that faces in Matthew’s gospel, Tom Long tells us that Jesus is tempted to make the nature of his work too small, to satisfy himself (Long, Matthew, 35). Not to have in his mind and before his eyes the picture of his call. Now, this does not mean that it was bad for Jesus to be hungry or that it is bad to fulfill physical need. This isn’t some ethereal flesh loathing text that calls us to asceticism, to flee to the hills and master our desires. Jesus is not saying no to food per se or no to his body per se. Rather, Jesus says no to the minimizing of his identity, to self concern and self satisfaction as set against trust in God and God’s mission. Jesus gives the final word to God and reminds the devil that being the Son of God means trusting God in the wilderness and being concerned with God’s mission for the world, not just with himself.

My own temptation in this time of uncertainty and waiting, like Jesus’ in the wilderness, is to be drawn into self-satisfaction and self-concern over concern for God’s mission and my call to be in that mission. This inward turn of self-concern manifests in anxiety…and here we are…in the wilderness.

Meeting Jesus in this wilderness does not mean that the anxiety will magically disappear or that God’s call to us will make life nice, comfortable, or easy. But it does mean that the forces that cause such anxiety do not have the final word.

Our identity is intertwined with the identity of Christ, remember, we are the body of Christ, Christians, that is, little Christs. By virtue of his identity as the Son of God, we are brought into the family of God, we are brought into His story, and we are freed by Christ to live into this identity, trusting the promises of God even in the wilderness, following God’s way even when it leads to the cross, and living defined by God even when other definitions of who we are may seem very appealing. Because of who Christ is, we are who we are. As Christ is shown to be the Son of God in the wilderness, we are God’s beloved Children in the wilderness, in the city, and even in the classroom. Only God defines us. All other voices are silenced. God has the final word.